State-Based Control
The Next Step in Industrial Automation
Looking to Upgrade Your Automation and Gain
a Competitive Advantage?
State-based control is THE answer to more effective and efficient facility operations. As a process moves through various states, the control system associates Steps with each state. It then uses that information to manage the process and build intelligence into all the devices (measurements, valves, pumps, etc). Leveraging state-based control, your processes become intelligent as devices become State Aware and know what to do not just during the ‘run state’ but can also handle startup, shutdown and every other process state.
State-based control is a paradigm shift in automation, making your control system more intelligent and your process more manageable.
MAVERICK Has the Technological
Know-How to Help You
MAVERICK’s multidisciplined, highly qualified and dedicated team of engineering experts, automation specialists, consultants and IT professionals stands ready to help you. Collectively, the team has decades of knowledge and experience working with state-based control and understand how to apply its many benefits, including the ability to:
- Build intelligence into industrial devices
- Use steps or states to control processes and mitigate risk
- Easily manage process upsets
- Improve asset management and reliability
- Simplify the startup process making operations more intuitive
- Effectively rationalizing alarms by making them meaningful and eliminate alarm showers
- Co-ordinate setpoint changes with process changes
The MAVERICK Approach
As an automation owner’s representative, the MAVERICK team provides a holistic approach to people, processes and technology, leveraging our industry-specific knowledge to help you find the right solution for your facility. We collaborate and work with all key stakeholders (e.g., EPCs, OEMs and third-party suppliers) providing unbiased platform-independent automation and process control expertise.
Idealize, Then Realize
Leveraging state-based control technology, our approach is to idealize, then realize an image to manage your process. By examining the states of the process – from idle through various states to run, shutdown and back to idle – we ‘idealize’ what it takes to manage your process. We look at the interactions between states of different units of equipment, as well as the transitions between states of each unit of equipment to build an image of how your process operates.
By examining the devices (I/O, pumps, block valves, and so on), we ‘realize’ that image of your process and begin to see what it can do. We define the intelligence for the transitions that move the process from state to state. By adding logic to the devices that make them State Aware, they become smart – alarms only ring when they are meaningful; pumps start and stop when needed; control modes and setpoints self-adjust according to the needs of the process; and block valves operate with intelligence.
Finally, we bring the process to life by using iterative testing and feedback during simulation from operations. Thus, the image is refined, and an intelligent process is brought to life.
MAVERICK Can Help:
- Develop the Layer 1 Process Control Strategy Documents (PCSD) that idealize the process states and transitions.
- Develop the Layer 2 PCSD that realize the interactions of I/O devices with the states and transitions.
- Code your program as we are platform-agnostic.
- Write your simulation. We write medium fidelity simulation that takes feedback from output devices to generate values for signal inputs. This process produces a simulation that mimics the general characteristics of your process sufficiently to test the state-based control program.
- Perform iterative testing. After initial program debugging, simulation is used to refine the program. By moving the simulation through the various process steps, we continually refine the program.
- Provide implementation and startup services.
- Ensure continuous improvements for state-based control as needed. This includes providing further logic and program refinement, as well as additional instrumentation to enhance process management.